i saw the interface of Daz studio and it looks like a simple progie....i get the feeling that P5 will actualy be better.....there arent that many features.....just a "pose, material, and render room" as i remember...... but seriously, what's the purpose in having another renderer that looks like, at the most, will only be as good as Poser 5? i think DAZ is partly capitalizing on the fact that many people are frustrated with curious labs and this is a good opportunity to cash in by taking away some angry CL customers.... i think many CL customers also dive into this in denial mode...thinking that this will be a solution to their 3D problems in light of Poser 5....but actually they dont want to think about the possiblity that DAZ Studio will be nothing more than a simple renderer that just got too much attention. i personally think DAZ is hype....first, not counting the excellent free models out there like MayaDoll, etc. DAZ is pretty much a Microsoft of Poser related content...theyre the only ones who really develop the heavyweight Poser content like figures (Vicky, M3, etc.).....when was the last time RuntimeDNA released their very own Vicky? DAZ is pretty much a "monopoly" like business in the Poser world (at least). second, I have purchased a couple of DAZ items and ALL OF THEM SHOULD HAVE HAD A CAUTION SIGN THAT SAYS "WARNING: YOUR NEWLY PURCHASED ITEM WILL NOT WORK RIGHT AWAY. SCRATCH YOUR HEAD AND BLOW ON YOUR MOUSE TWO TIMES, THEN START THE INSTALLER" 1. i got the V3 Bombshell hair and now its sitting on my HD cause Poser 5 hangs up whenever i load it (alone or conformed). many people on this forum also reported this when I posted for help. 2. i didnt learn my lesson so i made a second purchase. this time i got the Las Vegas Hair. it looks kewl as heaven....but i later realized it won't conform to V3. DAZ reported an update (V3 Fitter) for the hair but didnt bother to give me a hint where i could find the update. that helped me a lot. if it wasnt for your help my purchase wouldve been partly a waste. 3. i still didnt learn my lesson....this time i got Tailor 1.5. the thing wont install from 1.1.....i had to dig up my ohhh soooo old Tailor 1.03 burned on some age old back up CD-R i made ooohhhhh soooo long ago its embarrasing...what if i didn't find that CD-R? another wasted purchase..... was sup with that?

At most, as good as Poser 5? Well, maybe, just maybe DS will be stable, will do exactly what it says on the tin, and be modular, so you can buy in the bits you need, rather than paying for the things you wouldn't touch with a bargepole. DAZ ain't stupid, and they know damn well there's a market for an entry level pose/render app which is actually usable, expandable and does what it's supposed to. Probably. I don't get your drift about DAZ being hype. Everything I ever bought from them works just fine and dandy. Any problems I had were sorted out in a reasonable length of time. As content providers, they are second to none. Customer service is not as good as it should be, but it's a damn sight better than most others.

I am sorry to hear about your bad experience with DAZ products. I've bought a few things there and I would say the service was excellent. In fact in the past their tech support gal was a real sweetheart and even helped me with my Poser 4 technical issues. As for the new DAZ studio you are right on the money. Unless they've got something humongous up their sleeve that they haven't let on about this will be a real wasted effort that will achieve very little commercial success. They're not just taking on Curious Labs, they're taking on every other established software with a render engine, pose ability and materials palette (Maya, 3DMax,lightwave, Cinema 4D just to name a few). Just my two cents.

I never bought Poser 5 because of all the trouble with it and I'm eagerly awaiting DAZ Studio. You have to realize that the promo you see at DAZ is only for the base program. There will be add-on modules that will enhance it and make it do some awesome things. DAZ is one of the most incredible companies I've ever dealt with. They bend over backwards to please their customers. That's a rare thing these days. As for Bombshell hair, I have it and use it and it worked perfectly for me the very first time I used it. I'm not sure what the problem is you're having, but I'm sure DAZ will help you work it out. As for conforming to Vicki 3, you don't have to conform hair, you can parent it to her head and it'll work fine. I use hair made for other characters all the time. Conforming doesn't necessarily make it better. As long as it says with the head, that's all you need. I've used Jim Burton's San Francisco hair for Vicki on Michael by parenting it to his head, and it looks great. Don't be too hasty to judge DAZ. They're a terrific company, not a monopoly at all. They're a small company with a small staff, and they do all they can to satisfy their customers. Melanie

Wow! How did you two jump in ahead of me? :) I thought I was the first to reply. LOL Melanie

...i only have you guys to thank for the usability of my DAZ purchases....if it wasnt for the 24/7 help i always get her on the forum......forget it.....good money out the window man....so, I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU GUYS AGAIN FOR HELPING OUT OTHERS, no matter how "newbieotic" their troubles sometimes are..... :)

yeah....see the thing is....with DAZ you gotta buy stuff and more stuff for the stuff you already have to make that stuff work! know what um sayin? look at V3....so i buy the thing and im all excited like a little school who finally got to balls to talk to that girl sitting in front of the class....i unzip the thing and lo and behold....the thing didnt have one usable head or body morph! sup with that? now i gotta buy the head and body morph packs....and then buy textures, then buy clothes, etc..... why didn't they just packaged the V3 base with some "starter" stuff like a med res texture, underwear, 1 head morph to allow her to blink her eyes (V3 has to communicate somehow right?), and 1 morph to change her breast size....i mean, isnt that too much to add? i mean come on really? instead, no...u gotta shell out more stuff for stuff. same with DAZ Studio? buy more stuff for stuff you already have to make the stuff work like the stuff they said work? good luck. why not just include all of this stuff in one package?

I never bought Poser 5. I never really used Posers render engine much at all. I never likd it. Poser just seems to be really memory intensive. I just use Poser 4+Pro to create my basic poses, then I export into a real render package like Max or C4d... Once exported into something like C4d, all I have to worry about there is the mesh, and textures. DAZ Studio.. Seems to me like a cutdown for beginners. Like, uh, Milkshape Vs 3DMax...

biggert, we're always here, because we (as a user base) are non-geographical, so there will always be someone online at any given time. DAZ are pretty good at dealing with stuff, but I guess even they don't have the coverage to deal with stuff 24/7. But, given time and patience, they do get their shit together. In truth, I have never had a serious problem that couldn't be resolved by a couple of calls and emails to them. Sure, I had to wait a week a couple of times (which ain't good) but eventually they got it right for me. Last, you know we are/were all newbies once; some more than others. I been here about a year and a half now, and I'm still learning a lot of stuff, but it's all good. Party (or render) on, dude. :)

Hype? Perhaps in that DAZ has been promoting Studio's imminent release. But otherwise they have continually warned us that Studio is in its preliminary stages. They have also emphasized that it will not be "complete" upon its beta release. I am at a loss why you think their goal is "...taking away some angry CL customers..." They already have those customers, both happy and unhappy. Surely you have noticed the pervasive presence of DAZ products in the online gallery images.

Here's something to consider. They're at the mercy of something beyond their control. At various times in the past CL's survival was by no means certain and without Poser DAZ does not have a business. In that light it makes perfectly good sense to make an alternative available to the public. Indeed, to do otherwise might be considered criminally stupid.

DAZ have proven themselves to be anything but stupid. Studio will apparently provide the basic necessary functions quite early in the game. And it will be free. The basic program may well continue to be free. In time they intend to add various modules, for a price, that will extend Studio's capabilities to eventually match and quite possibly surpass those of Poser. If the past is any indication these additional modules will likely be reasonably priced. We will have the added benefit that we need only purchase those features that we want. Not interested in animation? Then don't pay for it- either in purchase dollars or unecessary computer resource overhead.

I do not doubt your word that you may have had problems with DAZ products. But literally thousands have not, far too many to believe that your problems are endemic. Regardless, not only does DAZ say they do not specifically support Poser 5 they also offer an unconditional 30 day guarantee on their products. I'm afraid your complaint does not ring true to these ears.

DAZ may well be the Microsoft of Poserland. If so, this was achieved not by hype or coercion but by a multitude of satisfied customers. In the past others have tried to provide a "vickie" equivalent. It is hardly DAZ's fault if those others failed. Lastly, DAZ is hardly a monopoly. Although I am well pleased with them there are far too many other sites that have also managed to convince me to send my money their way.

• Jack

I just hope D|S isn't like Vicky 3. Something that takes a lot more power, has incredible hype, costs a ton to buy what you already had... but then when you start fooling around with it find out it's incredibly flawed and needed a lot more work before it ever should have been released.

Biggert, Your V3 Bombshell Hair does not function reliably in P5 because of an anomoly in the P5 Firefly render engine. I believe it is a backface render error in the render calculation. Any reason for it not working lies withing P5 itself and that answer can only come from CL. The Hair functions properly in all other stable versions of Poser. Daz does not make P5 content because they knew P5 was garbage and figured they better build their own program before following CL into bankruptcy. Daz has been realatively quiet actually about Studio. They have said the initial release will be a renderer, yet I can tell you that P5 does not show you full render transparency in real-time does it? Since Daz did not write P5 you might want to contact CuriousLabs and ask them why a simple hair figure, though high in Polygon count, would cause a problem in Poser5. I think alot of us would be interested in CL's answer to that one. :) From what I have seen almost all of your problem are due to the fact that you are new to Poser anad still learning. I am sure as you become more skilled your problems will decrease. Some of the speculation on Studio is halarious. Milkshape Vs. Max. ROTFLMAO! -Anton

"Daz does not make P5 content because they knew P5 was garbage and figured they better build their own program before following CL into bankruptcy." Quote of the year. :) I'm with you on this, Dawg.

I like the idea of modular systems, buy what you want - forget the rest...with the exception of characters. As was pointed out here, Victoria 3 is not a character untill you add at least 2 more modules to be able to use her. [Same with Michael 3 I guess?] Sort of like buying a new car with a tag on the key ring that says: "In order to operate this vehicle, you need an engine--Sold Seperately". Daz is using the same marketing technique with Studio as with their Mill 3 characters, hopefully it won't require any modules up front b4 you can use the base program for the common functions of posing, rendering, etc...this would defeat the marketing strategy. I am hoping it will work hand-in-hand with Poser4 and not try to replace it. As far as Poser5, that was scratched off my 'want list' many moons ago.

************************************************* Sort of like buying a new car with a tag on the key ring that says: "In order to operate this vehicle, you need an engine--Sold Seperately". ************************************************* LOL

Biggert, No it is not "sort of" like that at all actually. ----------------------------------------------------- Let's talk about Pose Joint parameters for a second. Spheres? They used spheres. They could have at least changed the hard cosing for the spheres so you coulld morph their shapes for better falloff but nnoooooo. why do that? That would make too much sense. The spheres are ahrd coded into the program but something could have been done. Daz Studio will be worth it for the conversion from Poser joints to weight mapping alone. Changing geom was one of the unique Poser features worth expanding but did they make it easier?...noooooooo They made it worse my collapsing all the dials for the various parts into one display instance where the dials changed based on the part dialed in before. A Hair room with no undo button. A program with no undo button. And after FIVE versions of the software NO undo button. I hate to burst anyones bubble but Poser is not a professional program. If you have years and years of experience with it it is very powerful but who is going to do their doctorite in Poser! lol Give me a break. No Hardware acceleration and no ability to use dual processors which have been around for 10 years. After FIVE cersions of the software it is nothing more than an stealing to peddle a 5th version that is absolutley nothing more than ProPack with a barbaric hair room, a cloth room that crashes and forgets it's own defined groups and no way to save your settings as MAT files themselves. Inexcusable. If it wasn't for the hope that eventually DAZ Studio will provide us all a way out of this Poser Dark Age, I would have blown out of this market last year. I love P4. SHe is stable and true. Simple and to the point. Known for her limits but steady in her performace. In my opinion P4 was the last great version of Poser. See now I am all fired up and annoyed. hehe -Anton "Small words from a small being trying to attack what it doesn't understand" -Borg Queen, Star Trek-First Contact

"They're not just taking on Curious Labs, they're taking on every other established software with a render engine, pose ability and materials palette (Maya, 3DMax,lightwave, Cinema 4D just to name a few)" What??? these programs you mention are complete CG/effects and animation modeling programs Lets be frank here D/S is an open GL render room for Vicky and co. they want to assure that the rapacious poser junkies will continue to purchase their pre-made content and have a MODERN program in which to render it.

Anton - are you saying that D|S will be able to fix the crappy way the Millennium figures joints work without us having to wait for the next generation of characters? I am so sick of the kinking and bulging in the leg & arm joints and the horrific breasts in V3 that I'll go and kiss someone at Daz on the mouth if D|S can do something about these megaflaws

What's the purpose? As stated by someone earlier in this thread, how about survival? DAZ's business is based on Poser and at times it seems likes Poser's future was less than guaranteed. Will DS be better than Poser? Maybe, maybe not. But if they've been listening, and based on my experiences with DAZ I think they have, they know what people have been complaining about with Poser 5. I just got into Poser earlier this year with P5, so I've never worked with P4 or ProPack. Is P5 a dog? Could be, but I'm having a heckuva lot of fun with it. I've read many of the threads about DS and it seems most of the hype may be coming from excited artists who are looking for something better. I'll try DS when it comes out and make my decision then. As of now, DAZ can keep producing quality products, I can get great help to my problems here, the other content makers can keep producing their good stuff, the generous folks at this site and others can keep blessing us with great free stuff, and, well, life is good as far as I'm concerned.

I would imagine that new joints taking full advantage of Studio new method is preferable to old. I am sure any conversion may need tweaking. I was never involved with that aspect of development, but that method of joing joints is far superior. I think the Mil joints could have been done differently from the beginning, but the point of the new method was chosen for smoother and more graceful transitions. And it is industry standard now. Even in movies and games skin is usually covered by clothes, edited, or smaller movements are used. Not that any figure's joint's couldn't be better but the Mil figures are pretty good considering they are rigged for Poser. I spend all my time in Poser so I think everything could be better. I am a bad person to ask really. Hope I have answered your question. :) Daz did mention weight mapping before right? Maybe I should stop now. :)

yes Daz mentioned weight mapping. memory mangament with content. better handling of memory with morphs. a renderer that has some companies name circling it I think the name was oh yeah PIXAR Renderman. When all you have is Poser 5 and your creativity is sucked dry by slowness of application, frustrating use and the ocassional complete lockup DaZ Studio just could not be any worse than Poser 5 period. I'd buy Poser 4 for stability but I really don't want to throw my money in that companies direction. oh and I really bet that D|S lightwave plugin wont take a year and a half to show up and it wont cost and arm and a leg but maybe I'm wrong. its really simple. don't like Daz stuff, don't buy from them. don't think D|S will be for you, don't get it. I don't shop at Wallmart so I can understand. lets see we're at post 22, any bets this gets to 100 by tomorrow?

I've said it before so what the heck... Just wait until the first short tempered user with a long trigger finger can't render in D/S. The gloves will be off.

lol

So fine, it's gonna be the best thing since sliced bread and our lives will be irrevocably changed for the better with its arrival. That's nice. Now, where the hell is it?

Did someone say "weight mapping"? ;) PheonixRising, is this true? That and OpenGL alone would be worth the wait for D|S. Ratteler, if Daz is smart, they'll just convert the sphere mapping for joints over to weight mapping and then, possibly, allow remapping with a module or future update. That would be stupendous!! But, before we all go off to dreamland, let's remember that we're still waiting for the ALPHA version to be released for evaluation purposes. The extended delay tells me that they caught some sort of unexpected problem nearing completion of the alpha and are fast-at-work trying to eliminate it. Otherwise, it's more than a week overdue from the updated release date. [fingers crossed]

"I hate to burst anyones bubble but Poser is not a professional program." And another one. Anton, as long as you keep coming up with these gems, I'm gonna quote 'em. Man, you have a hell of a way with words. The above statement is just too cool.

I hate to burst anyones bubble but Poser is not a professional program And a pencil is just a pencil till you do something with it. Like anything else, it depends on what you do with it and how cognizant you are of the limitations you have to work around. I've seen Poser-generated stuff in the RW that blows away the best things in the galleries around here.

DAZ is not releasing DAZ Studio as a favor to anyone. They're not even worried about the stability of Poser 5, which runs just fine on my machine. The purpose of DAZ Studio is to commoditize 3D rendering programs like Poser so that people can spend their money on DAZ models instead of on the software itself. DAZ wants every single penny of your budget for 3D rendering. The real money is in models. They're a whole lot cheaper to develop than programs. DAZ Studio will never provide as much functionality as Poser (as long as Poser exists), but it will provide most of that functionality for free that people will opt to use DAZ Studio and use the additional money to pay for models. DAZ should be able to provide lots of tricks (in terms of models and utilities) that will make DAZ Studio "good enough," particularly when there's postwork involved. DAZ is not being alturistic in the slightest, but that's okay. They're brilliant capitalists, really. --Scot

erm....what tpriest said!

I've got to agree...I got into Poser at Version 5 and while it was difficult to understand at first, that was mainly because I had never worked in 3d at ALL before. That was mostly due to MY learning curve, not P5's bad coding. But before anyone thinks I am defending P5....I can say that after all the hullabaloo about P4 being better, it seems that I too may have preferred P4 to P5, if I had known better or started earlier.

But, since I didn't and after FINALLY getting to SR3 for P5 (NOTHING worked right til then...crashed on EVERY render) I seem to be doing much better, even more so as my knowledge of how to actually use the program itself and what all the bits and pieces do (as in..I had no idea why lashes needed a transmap and I got caterpillars for eyebrows for the first 3 weeks!).

I still have never tried the cloth room or the face room because I have no use for them yet, nor the animation, so I like the fact that D/S is modular. Now that I do a lot of work in P5, I too think the interface is horrid, slow and clunky. Memory hog extrordinaire!

I have high hopes for D/S as simply an alternative to P5 with the ability to SEE what I'm doing, unlike the "take your best shot" version of P5 clothing that doesn't show up in the workspace. I'm no codemaster nor 3d modeler, but at least it will give me a choice...and of course it IS a smart move for Daz businesswise.

The hype has been a bit overdone...but I agree that its mostly excited consumers talking and not DAZ itself. Which irritates me since they keep changing the date. Honestly, I'm BORED waiting for D/S at this point and am going into serious "so what" mode with all the wondering when it will comeout. Excitement wanes over time when ya don't get no cookie, but someone keeps insiting they are jsut about to take them out of the oven!

I too have had crappy experience with DAZ customer service...while they did make things semi-right with me over some issues, I still am leary of their whole set up (including marketing practices and general business practices) most of the time and the site drives me INSANE trying to keep up with where things are, what's on sale, what discount applies to what, and the list goes on. Can't help it..I'm a web developer and if I ran a site that way I would be FIRED....although I give kudos for their site look...very slick...makes me wish I designed it.

Daz products....never really had a problem other than trying to figure out where everything went when I installed it. But that just goes back to the whole organization scheme (or lack thereof) in P5 in my opinion. Its too damn much trouble to organize things all day long, but if you don't you can't find anything! I tried PBoost, but it seems to hate my XP...maybe someday I'll get it straightened out, but that won't stop me from buying from DAZ. So far they have the most dependable quality products on the market. We shall see what happens since Anton left...I rather liked your stuff! (Where can we find you now?)

All in all..I say D/S is a good thing...let's hope it lives up to the hype!

zai

I was at the front of the queue to buy Poser5 & I loved using it. Yes that's right I LOVED using it, recently I've had to go back to poser4 as I really need the speed & stability that it has over Poser5, I'm missing the brilliant runtimes tho. If D|S can do what poser5 can without all the crashes I'm there simple as. grypho the biggest bug they've recently found is the xmas bug, no-one could seriously think they'd release D|S this close to xmas did they? we're looking at early to middle January at the earliest. They've spent the last 6 months since announcing it squashing bugs & testing it, looking at the pictures they released back then & since you can see the program was ready except for bug squashing & testing. I'm glad they didn't do a CL & release it 6 months ago.

Who had seen and used really Daz Studio now and then?So wait and see. After that, we will comment.

Well said Anton @18. All software has a learning curve, but with Poser it stops half way up. You never get to the top. You are constantly fighting the program even after years of experience. My conviction is that no-one at Curious Labs actually uses Poser for anything. If they did, they would have to fix those bugs if only for their own benefit. Because Daz is a more content-driven outfit, I'm hoping they will have a very different perspective.

Poser has not had a substantial improvement in years. (I have Poser 5 as well as P4/PP, and I like it and use it, but I don't consider it a major improvement.) Poser needs regular upgrades that make use of the increasing power of the hardware and software. Someone told me that video RAM doesn't matter to Poser. You gotta be kidding! Video card memory makes a huge difference with just about every other Windows app, especially games, but Poser isn't designed to take advantage of it? (I assume this means hyperthreading doesn't matter, either.) Maybe CL's new owner will change things, and start truly upgrading Poser...but what if they don't? Poser could end up the equivalent of a DOS program in a Windows world. Yeah, it works...but not very well. We need alternatives. We need competition. We need a company that's willing to move Poser (or an equivalent program) into the 21st century.

tis funny to read these threads you know.. ok whats the point of DS? have a look at the 3D market at the moment. of Modellers we have loads. Max, Maya, Lightwave, trueSpace, Carrera, Blender.. the list goes on.. with most there's a renderer as well. but... for dedicated human rendering? 1. poser. thats it. Simple survival by Daz if ya ask me... right now all the eggs are in one basket. if poser goes, then the market goes. ok we can keep using poser if the company folds.. but as OS's and Hardware move on, it would get left behind more and more.. eventually not being able to run unless you keep an old system to run it on. Have a look at the Programs Graveyard to see examples of that... as for hyping DS? that made me laugh.. Daz haven't hyped it! The Community has!

Obviously the only reason dor D|S is to make sure that Daz has an engine of their own to render their products in. I hope it turns out nice - but frankly I am not holding my breath much. The only saving grace to Poser for high end work these days is Body Studio so you can pull the Poser stuff into Max. If D|S changes things such that the scenes won't load into Body Studio any more then it isn't going to be of much value. Renderman is a nice thing to say for rendering but really it isn't going to change anything. Firefly is a good renderer too and it hasn't change the world either and that is because there is a LOT more to a useful rendering tool than just the engine. You need to be able to compose, light and place cameras into the scene and actually manage large amounts of geometry. Another application that can render single Poser figures isn't going to help with that. What WILL be a nightmare is if Daz decides they are going to release figures that only function well in D|S. Considering they have decided not to "officially" support Poser5 you can see the split coming a mile away. When that happens I will be sad to see them go - but without a good pathway into Max there is no way I am locking into D|S. Hopefully they are smarter than that - and so far Daz seems pretty smart.

Daz is concerned with survival, like the rest of us. For awhile back there everyone knew Curious Labs was having serious financial issues. CL ended up 'leting go' almost everyone they had on staff and the rumors were that the ship was sinking fast. Daz Studio is a ship, right now just a raft, that will keep Daz afloat and will be a place for the Daz models to work in case CL totally goes away. After all, how many times has Poser been sold now?! I'm looking forwards to trying it. A little competition is a good thing. It seems initially D|S will be almost the equivilant of Poser 4, without animation, but then with the modules and 3rd party people developing modules I'm willing to bet that it will be able to surpass Poser 5. But time will tell, and I'm willing to wait and see. :)

We are so far down now I have forgotten what the original question was, so I am going to throw in a couple of new ones. This may have been covered elsewhere, if so I have forgotten that also. All the things I have heard so far is that Daz Studio will be backward compatible with P4, makes sense from Daz's viewpoint...but will it be necessary to rearrange folders, etc., from P4 to DS? Or can we leave our Poser4 directories/folders "as is" and import items from there into DS as we need them? I am not sure either of those questions make sense, but maybe the person that answers them will be smarter than the dude that asked!

I think but am not certain that I read Studio will support multiple runtime directories. This implies that it will be able to use our assets as stored in the current Poser directory structure. As pure speculation I would also expect DAZ to use the current file structure. They clearly want as many people as possible to try Studio so it would only be sensible to make this as easy as possible for the user. - Jack

As an added note: the current Poser asset file structure is cumbersome. It would be nice if Studio used another, better approach but maintained backwards compatibility with the currrent structure. - Jack

That shouldn't be difficult. You need to manage a little database of file locations that tells the program, look here, but if you don't find it, look in these places as well. It should be good practice to allow the user as much flexibility as possible as to deciding where to put files.

"You never get to the top. You are constantly fighting the program even after years of experience" -- I'm sorry but this is just not true. I do mean that with the most respect though. Anton I love your stuff... and all the other disclaimers and such that may keep me from getting flamed. ;) I do REALLY respect the fact that this thread has remained civil enough that I would consider posting in it. -- I think that DAZ is finding out how hard it really is to put out a software product. Lemme tell you... It is a huge can of worms. Every time you fix something you have taken the chance of (and probably have) broken 2 or 3 things. I'm not kidding. You're like "The programers only fixed the keyframe glitch. How the hell did it break joints, break rendering shadow maps AND break saving texture settings on save"? Before anyone goes there... No it is not Poser's crap coding (as it's being called). I'm not kidding when I say I've done QA on approx 25 graphics apps between working at RayDream, Fractal, MetaCremations and Curious Labs. It's a very intricate ballancing act. Now... what the hell was I saying? Oh yeah! DAZ is most likely finding problem after problem after problem that makes D/S not usable. Comming from a guy who has done this crap for years I can say I feel bad for them. Puting out a quality product like DAZ does with models is hard in its own right. Software is harder. Joe

"Puting out a quality product like DAZ does with models is hard in its own right. Software is harder." Especially when you have users that will flame you to hell in web forums when something doesn't work as expected.

DS is another tool we can use. Some people won't like it, some people will. It will have it's own advantages and disadvantages. As a brand new product, and a free beta at that I expect problems. In fact, I hope for some. Then I can see if Daz does a better job of fixing them than CL did. Some don't like Daz as a company. My experience is that they seem to be the most customer service company I've ever dealt with. 30 days to get a refund after a purchase, always help when I call, and I like most of their products. After putting up with P5's problems and CL's attempts to stay afloat, I'll welcome a new product from a company that I've come to trust. As for DS itself... well, Daz does seem to be doing things right. Smaller feature set that actually works (I hope). Tested by a LARGE and OPEN base. Modular so other enhancements can be added later. Open GL. And the price for the base is right. We know that it'll be able to do just about everything P4 does as part of the base. Posing, rendering, materials, etc. LawnDart is right about developing a new program. Every time you make a change, it affects other parts of the program. The goal is to identify problems and localize fixes. Not an easy task, but it's been done before. Otherwise we would all be playing with Mattel's Barbie and Ken instead of making images. Let's wait until DS is released to evaluate it. After all, isn't that what a beta test is?

The key words being "as expected". Well said my friend.

"Poser has not had a substantial improvement in years". Come on! The features in ProPack and P5 alone should have been versions P5 P6 and P7. You know as well as I do that if CL spent all the money on recoding there would have been no money to put in new features. "Then what? Re-release Poser 4 so all the people who owned it before could buy it again"? "No... They should give it away". "Uh... and they stay in business how? They can't release anything new if they aren't in business". "Uh... My amp goes up to 11... You know, so it's louder". "Well... Why not just make 10 louder"? "Uh... My amp goes up to 11". LOL... I love Spinal Tap Joe

Well actually it is crap code. Most programmers don't know how to write and design code that is reliable and maintainable. If you fix one thing and it breaks another, it's crap code and written poorly. Its not a balancing act, it's just poor design. I have 25 years experience in this, so I know what I am talking about.

Thanks for setting me strait. I didn't realize that I was working with around 40 or 50 crap coders over the years and 25 crap coded products. No wonder. I should have been doing QA on databases or something I guess. Boy that sounds fun! Wow... I just talked myself out of and back into this industry in around... oh... 37 seconds. Ah... another day. LOL

"Come on! The features in ProPack and P5 alone should have been versions P5 P6 and P7." Maybe - if they had used the power of the improved hardware and OS. Don't get me wrong, I love Cloth Room and the Hair Room and Firefly all...but it's like pulling teeth to get Poser to render it. Even if you have a top of the line computer. It shouldn't be that way. I don't want new features. I want the program to be stable, and it to work faster. I'd pay for that. I mean, is it asking too much to have Poser use video RAM to take some of the load off the CPU? I'm not a programmer. I'm just a user. But when I look at the improvement I've seen in speed, stability, and features in other graphics software over the past few years (CADD, gaming, etc.) - Poser hasn't measured up.

I wrote: "You never get to the top. You are constantly fighting the program even after years of experience" Lawndart^2 replied: -- I'm sorry but this is just not true. I do mean that with the most respect though. I'll give you an example why it IS true. Take item selection. In any 3D program, sure you can select an item from a drop-down or pop-up list, but if there are a lot of items, it's easier to select by pointing at it. In some programs, this is daunting at first, because clicking accesses only the item in front when you want to get at the item behind. So you struggle with moving the view around until you can get a free click at the item. Then you learn that there's an easy way: Ctrl+click (or something similar) allows you to select any of the items under the cursor, even the ones at the back. Suddenly using the program becomes so much more pleasant. After years of using Poser I'm still waving the mouse around hoping to highlight the object I want to select by clicking on it. Even worse, if it's the object right in front I STILL can't guarantee that clicking on it will select it. This why I say the program is a constant struggle. Even when you are really familiar with it, you are still fighting the interface. The easy ways of doing things that ought to be there, aren't there. So much of the design is just poorly thought out.

Well I can say that I am very interested in seeing Daz studio. Just the use of hardware acceleration is great. You would have thought that CL would have included this feature in Poser 5. They most likely tried but couldn't get it to work right considering that P5 was released way before it should have been out of alpha stages. Now it might be in the first beta stages. Daz has warned about the lack of optimization with the studio beta, so it may be have some or a lot of bugs, but thats why they call it a beta. Hopefully they will get a lot of feedback from the "beta testers" to fix it and get it to a stable working stage. Maybe I will just stick with Maya if DS doesn't cut it. Even if Daz Studio is just a render engine, So is Renderman and Mentalray for maya. They sure out render Poser if you can figure out how to use them. I am hoping Daz studio will include Global illumination in their renderer. Poser render engines are really bad including FireFly. Thats just My Opinion.

LawnDart, I can't personally attest to the MacOS versions of Poser 4/PP (and even P5 ;-) - they may well be better than "crap code." But the Windows "interface" code that ports it from Mac to Windoze clearly is sadly lacking. It was marginal in it's day - which granted was fairly common, even Adobe had problems with their proprietary memory manager back then. But it's woefully poor now and makes the whole product appear to be "craply" coded, but it hasn't even been touched since, in any release or SR. This means a) existing bugs remain through at least the last 3 major releases even though some appear to be fairly localized if not relatively simple, b) it's not remained current as Windows has moved through many, many versions - some significant ones like NT, and c) new latent bugs have come to the surface due to b). Not addressing these in order to put in new features, is just asking for your customers to rebel IMHO. What is it about this Windows interface code - which new features in Poser 5 clearly avoid using? Is it really too hard to fix? Or did, as seems more probable, CL lose the legal right to fixes/updates to it somewhere along the line? Just wondering...